Paper Cherry Blossoms
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Cherry blossom season begins this week. A symbol of the start of spring, they are beautiful clouds of delicate petals and reminders of the fleeting nature of life, as the season quickly ends.
For those that have participated in cherry blossom festivals, the mood that the flowers create is incredible and hard to forget. I decided to create the blooms with paper, to have an air of romance and a feeling of renewal all year round at home.
A single sheet of regular printer paper will create the full branch pictured above, with petals to spare. They are a time consuming and difficult flower to create. If you are new to paper crafting, I recommend starting with paper daisies first - they have a much easier fringe center.
Tools
Craft Scissors or Cutting Machine
Curling Tool
Piercing Tool or Needle
Sponges
Foam Block
Materials
Paper & Template
Aleene’s Tacky Glue
Pan Pastels - Magenta, Diarylide Yellow, Red Iron Oxide, Phthalo Green
Brown Floral Tape
Floral Wire - 26 GA
Tissue Paper (not pictured)
How to Make Paper Cherry Blossoms:
Gather all craft materials & download the pattern at the end of this post.
Cut shapes from copy paper using scissors. Cutting machine highly recommended for this project.
Using sponge, apply Pan Pastel color onto all flower shapes, going over flower centers twice with magenta for a gradient.
Cut 1” wide tissue paper strip, after applying yellow Pan Pastel to edge, into fringe. Then cut into varying lengths.
Cut varying lengths of wire, 3-5” in length. Glue fringe onto wire with tacky glue. Let dry.
Glue leaves together by “sandwiching” wire in between two leaves.
Pierce center of all flower petals and sepals with needle or tool. Glue 3-petal shapes as buds onto wire, sepal onto base of bud.
For flowers, glue heart-petal shape onto fringe, round-petal shape onto its base. Let dry.
Cover wire stems with brown floral tape.
Assemble flower bunches in groups of 5 & 6, using floral tape to secure. Then use floral tape to layout and secure bunches into branch. Add leaves last, securing with floral tape.
As the branch is composed of all wire and tape, it is highly flexible. Bending the shape to create a wreath or making a cherry blossom head piece are other possible ideas!
Using two sheets of printer paper, I create two separate branches. They can easily be combined using floral tape into one larger branch.
Two sheets of printer paper were used to make the larger branch above.
